Hypothermia
by PenPatronus
Summary: In this missing moment from 3B's "Riddled," Scott and Derek meet up with Melissa and Agent McCall after they rescue Stiles from the coyote den. Hurt / comfort, bromance, friendship, drama.


**Summary: **In this missing moment from 3B's "Riddled," Scott and Derek meet up with Melissa and Agent McCall after they rescue Stiles from the coyote den. Hurt / comfort, bromance, friendship, drama.

**Hypothermia**

PenPatronus

Scott blew through three stop signs as he raced towards the Beacon Hills preserve. His dad's car was just about to turn left onto the main road when Scott flashed his lights. The car hesitated, then parked. Scott left both his bike and his helmet on the side of the road and sprinted over. "I got Mom's text," he said to his dad, who rolled down the driver's side window. "Do you have him? Is he ok?"

"Scott, back here," Melissa called from the rear of the car. Scott opened the back door and jumped in, and the car took off again for the hospital.

"Oh, God," Scott gasped when he saw Stiles curled up in a fetal position with his cheek on Melissa's thigh. His lips were tinted blue and his skin was bleach white. The werewolf knelt in the narrow space between the driver's seat and his mom's knees and cupped his best friend's face in his trembling hands. "Stiles? God, Mom, he's so cold."

Melissa was in nurse mode. "Give him your jacket, sweetheart." She checked Stiles' pulse and then stroked his hair.

Scott shrugged his coat off and added it to the other two piled on Stiles' body. Jostled, Stiles' eyelashes fluttered, but he didn't speak. Scott slipped his hands beneath the coats and rubbed Stiles' back. Goosebumps blossomed across his own skin at the touch. "Shouldn't he be shivering? I'm shivering just touching him!"

Melissa bit her lip. She pressed her middle and forefinger to Stiles' neck once more.

His throat closing like a vice, his voice up an octave, Scott cocked his head and caught his mother's eyes. "That's a bad sign, isn't it? Is he hypothermic? Is he going to…" Scott's Adam's apple blocked his windpipe.

Melissa avoided the question hovering in the air. "We'll be at the hospital in three minutes. Just… Just tell me if he stops breathing."

Scott stopped breathing, then. It was a full sixty seconds before he realized that he was holding his own breath. He cursed and kept rubbing Stiles' back.

Suddenly cold fingers clawed at Scott's bare arm. Brown eyes blinked and dilated. "Scott?" Stiles slurred.

"Hey!" Scott grabbed his best friend's hand and held it tight. "I'm here, man. How do you feel?"

Stiles licked his lips and stared at Scott without actually seeing him. He spoke so softly that only a werewolf could hear him say, "Scott, come find me…"

"Stiles!" Scott gently smacked his cheek. "Stiles, we did find you. See? I'm right here, I'm right here."

His eyes focused. Scott squeezed his hand tighter and the pressure seemed to get Stiles' attention. Suddenly a shiver went through Stiles' body so violently that Scott thought he was having a seizure. Stiles' teeth started to chatter and tears coalesced in the corners of his eyes. "S-S-Scott?"

"He's starting to warm up," Melissa reported. She leaned over and kissed Stiles' cheek. "That's it, baby. Keep fighting."

"I'm cold."

"I know." Scott rubbed Stiles' hands between his palms like he was trying to start a fire with two sticks.

Stiles' eyes widened. "I saw a monster," he whispered to Scott. "But it was a man. It was… It had bandages. Scott, it knew my name."

"We're here," Scott's dad called. Scott peeked over the seats and saw the sign for the emergency room. They parked. Melissa told her ex-husband to run inside and get a gurney.

Suddenly the back door opened. "I can carry him," Derek Hale said.

At the sight of the fierce, determined look on Derek's face, Scott didn't argue. He shifted Stiles onto his back and scooted him towards the door. "Careful," Scott said when Derek slid his arms under Stiles' knees and back and lifted him off the seat.

"I got him." Derek hugged Stiles close to his chest to share his body heat.

Stiles' couldn't speak without slurring his words. "Hey, sour wolf." He tapped Derek's nose and gave him a drunk smile. "How's my sour wolf?"

"Save your strength, Stiles." Derek carefully stepped over the parking space barrier and followed Scott and Melissa down the sidewalk.

Stiles suddenly clenched Derek's jacket. "The monster man," he whispered, "had a metal mouth. Iron fangs, Derek. He knew my name. He kept asking me… He kept asking me riddles." It was a struggle for Stiles not to bite his own tongue.

Derek decided that it was a good idea to keep the teen talking. "What man?" he asked.

"I couldn't see his eyes. He spoke Japanese. He wrote on the wall with chalk."

Derek swallowed the anxiety threatening to suffocate him and walked faster.

Stiles tugged on his sleeve. "Help me," he whispered. "There was one riddle I couldn't answer. It's important. I think it's important."

"Tell me," Derek said.

"He said 'everyone has it, but no one can lose it.'"

A cliché popped into Derek's mind. "Your mind."

Stiles' hand flopped limply against his stomach. "I'm losing my mind," he whispered to himself more than to Derek.

"Don't say that." Derek didn't mean to growl.

Stiles shivered.

They burst through the hospital doors. The lobby was empty except for Agent McCall and one nurse pushing a gurney towards them. "Where are the orderlies?" Melissa barked at the nurse. "Never mind. Go heat up some saline. Scott, grab some blankets out of the hall closet. You call the Sheriff," she ordered her ex-husband who immediately retreated and took out his cell phone.

Derek gently set Stiles down on the gurney. Stiles' muscles were so stiff that Derek had to force his legs to flatten. Melissa stuffed a pillow under his head. "Stay with him," she said to Derek before she sprinted behind the front desk.

The werewolf gently picked up the teen's hand, wrapped it between his warm, calloused palms and blew hot air between his fingers. The sensation startled Stiles. "You felt that," Derek observed.

"Steel jaw trap," Stiles whispered. "That's what his mouth was. His mouth and… Derek, I'm bleeding. I got caught in a coyote trap."

Derek frowned. He looked at Stiles' bare, blue-tinted feet. "I don't see any blood." Derek put Stiles' hand down, took off his jacket and wrapped up Stiles' feet.

"You can lose blood," Stiles whispered, "and you can lose your mind…" He lifted his hand up and stared at it. "You can lose your breath, lose the feeling in your extremities…"

Taking the cue, Derek returned to blowing hot air on Stiles' skin.

Stiles' voice dipped down to werewolf hearing. "You can lose yourself…" he half-whispered. "But what can't you lose?"

"Is he conscious?" Scott ran up with three thick blankets in his arms. "Stiles?" Scott tossed the top blanket to Derek. "Help me," he begged. Derek wrapped Stiles from the waist down, taco-style. Scott leaned in close to Stiles' white face. "Hey." He gently tapped Stiles' cheek with his middle and forefinger. "Mom said to get these clothes off of you, all right? Did you get wet at all?" Scott started trying to roll Stiles' shirt over his head. Derek rushed to his side with a pair of scissors. He held the fabric above Stiles' chest while Scott cut. After the shirt came off they moved to Stiles' feet and gently tugged his pajama bottoms out from under the blanket. They used the other two blankets to wrap Stiles up.

"Is that better?" Scott returned to the head of the gurney. "Stiles? Are you warming up?"

Suddenly, Stiles' eyes rolled back into his skull. His head flopped to the left and his cheek landed in Derek's open palm. Five seconds later his lips started to turn blue.

"Oh my God," Derek choked.

"Mom!" Scott shouted. "_Mom – he stopped breathing_!"

Melissa appeared so fast she might have teleported. "Move!" she barked at the two boys. They obeyed, both flattening themselves against the wall. Melissa checked Stiles' pulse, then pulled the blanket back and put her stethoscope against his cold, bare chest. "Arrhythmic," she said to herself. "He's going into shock." Melissa plugged Stiles' nose, tilted his head back and breathed air into him.

The night nurse reappeared. She stabbed a needle into Stiles' arm and hooked up a saline drip. "Intubate?" she asked Melissa.

Melissa watched for Stiles' chest to rise and fall on its own. "No fluid. We need humid oxygen," she said. The nurse raced down the hall. "Scott, the water bottles should be warm by now – go get them." Scott's face was nearly as white as Stiles'. He said nothing, just pivoted around the gurney and jumped over the desk.

Derek managed to squeeze some words out of his narrow throat. "How can I help?" he asked.

Melissa grabbed his wrist and put his hand flat on Stiles' chest. "If his heart stops can you do compressions without breaking all of his ribs?" Melissa didn't wait for an answer but returned to breathing into Stiles' mouth. On the third try a wheeze fluttered out of his lips. Derek and Melissa stared, prayed, waited for the longest two seconds to see if Stiles would keep breathing. It was slow, but he started to.

"Thank you, God," Melissa hiccupped. Scott and the nurse returned. "Put the hot water bottles under the blankets but not directly against his skin." Melissa took the oxygen mask from the nurse and held it against Stiles' nose and mouth. She checked his pulse. She pulled back an eyelid. Derek, Stiles and the nurse backed away from the gurney. The whole hospital seemed to hold its breath.

Melissa sighed. "He's stabilizing."

"_**Stiles**_?"

Sheriff Stilinski stampeded through the door. He stopped, dead still at the sight of his son, then remembered himself and ran forward. "Oh god, Stiles?" The sheriff leaned over the gurney, nearly pressing his nose against his son's. "Is he breathing? Is he ok? Is he all right?"

"He will be," Melissa assured him, though some doubt lingered behind her eyes. "We can move him now. You can come, Sheriff, if you want."

"Of course, of course." A brief flash flood of tears erupted from Stilinski's eyes. He wiped them away and then moved to the other side of the gurney, patting Derek and Scott on the shoulder as he passed them.

The figurative light bulb suddenly went off in Derek's head. "Wait!" he shouted when they started to push the gurney. Derek took Stiles' hand and leaned down to his face, cheek to cheek, Derek's lips an inch from Stiles' ear. "A shadow," he whispered to his friend. "Everyone has it but no one can lose it: a shadow." He nodded at the others, then. Stilinski, Melissa and the nurse wheeled Stiles down the hall where they disappeared through the doors to the ER.

The two werewolves stood alone in the lobby. Scott let out a breath that he might have been holding for 10 minutes. "What was that about?" he whispered to Derek.

"Nothing." Derek clawed his fingers through his hair. "Just answering a question he asked."

Scott leaned back against the wall and slowly let himself slide down it to the floor. "I should call Lydia," he said, numbly. "See if Isaac found Allison…"

Derek took a steadying breath. "I'll..." He looked around the room, half desperate for a job to keep him busy. "I'll track down some jumper cables. Get Stiles' jeep running."

"This isn't supposed to happen." Scott spoke in a deadpan, stared at the floor without looking at it.

Derek licked his lips. "I know."

"I mean this isn't supposed to happen to _him_."

"That's what I meant," Derek whispered.

"You, me, the others, the supernatural, this town, Derek. This shit happens to us but not to Stiles. This isn't – this isn't supposed to happen to _him_."

Derek put a hand on Scott's shoulder. "You want me to teach you again? Take a deep breath, Scott," he said. "Call the others, then go look in on him. Take the next best step, and then another, Scott. Just focus on the next step." Derek squeezed Scott's shoulder and then left him to his thoughts.

**The End**


End file.
